Albatross Encounter Kaikoura

29/07/2024

Serenity.

📷: Our guest .nz 👌



Repost .nz:

“I was very fortunate to head out recently on an Albatross tour with and it far exceeded expectations.
I would strongly recommend it.

There were plenty of birds and dolphins around however the Wandering Albatross was one of the main highlights for me.

It’s quite a surreal feeling to have these massive birds gliding all around you.

The Wandering Albatross is one of the larger Albatrosses with a wingspan of a whopping 3m (a standard door height in NZ is around 2m for reference)

These birds spend the majority of their life on the water and will only come on land to breed.
They can travel vast distances in a single day, up to 900km.

Fun fact:
The birds have mastered the art of gliding and can soar for several hours without a single flap of their wings.
They are so efficient at flying that they actually use up less energy in the air than while sitting in a nest.”

04/07/2024

Hutton’s shearwater 🩵

Whilst we think every day should be a day; July 3rd was This day marks when the extinct Great Auk Pinguinis was last seen in 1844, and it is now a date set to raise awareness of the ongoing conservation threats to seabird populations.

A fitting time then perhaps to highlight our very special local species. Endemic to are in decline and without protection this extraordinary species could one day be lost forever.

To find out more about these precious birds and the work being done to protect them check out The Hutton’s Shearwater Charitable Trust @ huttonsshearwater.org.nz

03/07/2024

19/06/2024

🩵 World Albatross Day 🩵



“Image Repost 📷: Just two wanderers, enjoying a moment together. “

13/06/2024

Duet

This captured by our guest
👌🩵

06/06/2024

Who’s looking at who? 👀

This from a captured by our Skipper Gary 👌

31/05/2024

Antarctic Fulmar 🤍

It’s the season for these beautiful visitors to our coastline. Sighted on recent tours is a mid sized fulmarine petrel, typically seen off the between May and September

Often seen alone out at sea, Gary was fortunate to see two individuals at the same time! Hard to capture well; but swipe right to check out this rare event 👀

📷: Our Skipper, Gary 👌

22/04/2024

White-capped albatross at Kaikoura. Classified as near threatened, white-capped albatross are endemic to New Zealand's remote Subantarctic Islands. The main threat too this species of lesser albatross, also known as mollymawks, is longline fishing.
📸 Dennis Buurman

08/03/2024

🫶

29/02/2024

Reflecting 💙



This moment captured by our guest 📷👌

14/02/2024

When albatross show the love 🫶🫶



Repost from our guest
“I’d asked them to do something different” 😀👍

06/02/2024

When it’s on! 💪

Stunning set of images from our guest 👌

Repost: “Argy bargy at the back of the boat!”

02/02/2024

16/11/2023

Stunner day to welcome our first cruise ship passengers of the season aboard ☀️🛳️⚓️

Had a great time with guests from National Geographic Orion 👌

📷: 👍

25/08/2023

We are thrilled to be included with some great company as a finalist in the Tourism category in The Enterprise North Canterbury Business awards! 🏆

In the first year that Kaikōura businesses have been able to enter it’s fantastic to see our town so well represented across the categories.

It would be lovely to see a Kaikōura business be celebrated in the People’s Choice category. We encourage you to check it out and vote and every vote goes into a draw to win a mini group pass from Hanmer Springs Thermal Pools & Spa so you can be in to win whilst supporting a local business! 👍

One vote for one business per person and voting closes 1st September.

https://enterprisenorthcanterbury.co.nz/business-awards/peoples-choice/

28/03/2023

Last Wednesday there was a record number of crash landings! One week later with more stormy weather upon us 💨please keep an eye out for our precious T**i 👀

Volunteers have been busy tendering to injured birds after 100 young Hutton’s shearwaters crash-landed in Kaikōura in just one night.

17/03/2023

Yellow 278 👀

Super excited to record a sighting of this male Gibson’s albatross yesterday!

Banded in December 1996, he is not often seen by researchers as he breeds outside of their study area.

He was last recorded in in May 2017, so it was very special to welcome him back! 💙

03/03/2023

Celebrated with a 👀

This pink-footed shearwater (Ardenna creatopus) was sighted on our afternoon tour today!

This is actually our second sighting this year, a previous encounter with a pink-footed shearwater following a commercial fishing boat was recorded by Tracy four weeks ago.

Classified as vulnerable with a life expectancy of up to 60 years, this species breeds on three islands off Chile and typically migrates to the west coast of Canada, USA and Peruvian waters. 🇨🇱 🇨🇦 🇺🇸 🇵🇪

Visitors to NZ waters are very occasional and the last sighting recorded in Kaikōura was in 2018! 🍀



📷: Our Skipper, Gary 👌

24/12/2022

Happy holidays everyone! 🤶🎅🎄🎁

We are closed today and we are back on the water with our 9.00am tour on 26th December, and our operating base, Cafe and retail store reopen at 7.00am

Thank you for all your support over the past year and here’s to a fantastic 2023!

Card design by our very talented guide Dani 🙌 💙

10/12/2022

Our latest guests, Bill & Ester; dedicated bird watchers from the USA, had Kaikoura on their "must see & do" list.
It made us look closer at our backyard and after reading Albatross Encounter Kaikoura website we discovered the 'why' ...
Kaikoura NZ

21/11/2022

Great day for it ☀️

Fantastic to welcome the first cruise ship of the season, and the first since the pandemic to Kaikoura NZ today 👏

Excited to welcome our guests from The Seabourn Odyssey aboard! 😀👍

📷: Ian Bradshaw 👍

19/10/2022

Did you know Kaikōura is home to a wide variety of marine bird species?

The list of seabirds sighted off the Kaikōura Coast include five species of great albatross, up to ten species of the smaller lesser albatross (commonly referred to as mollymawks), ten species of shearwaters, fifteen species of petrel, and several other species of seabirds such as shags, prions, penguins, gulls and terns.

Our good friends at Albatross Encounter Kaikoura are incredibly passionate about taking folk out to view these majestic birds in their natural environment.

And the great news is they have Spring Deals available, check them out https://www.kaikoura.co.nz/spring/

21/09/2022

Love a good news story 👏

19/09/2022

Excited to have a rare sighting of White Morph on our tour yesterday! 🤩

The main species of giant petrel we regularly encounter on our tours are Northern giant petrels with occasional sightings during the wintertime of dark phase southern giant petrels so it’s not often that we see a White Morph.

Dark phase giant petrels can be distinguished by the colouration on the tip of the bill, reddish-brown in Northern giant petrels and a greenish tip in the Southern giant petrel.

Approximately 10% of southern giant petrel population have a distinctive white morph phase.

This individual was very aggressive and certainly made its presence known; it was regularly seen fighting with Northern giant petrels during our encounter.

11/09/2022

07/09/2022

Not your everyday sighting! 👀

Guests recently were lucky to encounter a leopard seal on their tour! 💙

Great timing as our Skipper, Tracy is contributing to a talk on leopard seals with a focus on tomorrow at 4pm at our base at 96 Esplande. If you’re in town come along and find out more.

18/08/2022

The return of our T**i, Kaikoura's Hutton's shearwater is imminent and we are excitedly waiting for them to show up off Kaikoura's coast and shortly after at their breeding grounds 🤩

To make this even more fun, we would like to invite you, our community, to keep your eyes peeled for us.

The first verified* sighting of a Hutton's shearwater brought to our attention will literally win a 'spot prize' 😊

Please get in touch with us here or email to [email protected]

*To verify your sighting, either take a photograph which clearly shows the features identifying the bird as a Hutton's shearwater or give a detailed description of where and when you saw the bird, including what identified the bird as a Hutton's shearwater. 👍

Ready, steady... GO!!! 😃

18/06/2022

On we are privileged to have been introducing our guests to the variety of species that frequent for over 24 years! 🙌 We are so lucky to encounter these precious birds everyday and share our love for them with our guests! 🍀💕

Whilst we think every day should be lived like it’s World Albatross Day 💙 why not use the date as an impetus to decide to learn more about the threats these magnificent birds face and the work being done to try and protect them; share with and educate others, volunteer or donate to an albatross cause you care about, take a step or another step towards a more sustainable lifestyle….